Simviation Forum - Potential Issues removing default planes?

Reply #15 - Jun 16^th, 2010 at 5:17am

Hagar Offline
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ShaneG wrote on Jun 15^th, 2010 at 11:04am:

My problem is, is that my Aircraft folder is larger than the entire initial install. Grin

There are 875 individual aircraft folders, inside the FS9/Aircraft/ folder, with almost 700 of those being AI planes. Shocked

Blimey Shane! Shocked

No wonder FS takes a while to load. One would have to ask whether it's all necessary. You can't possibly use them all.

As Daube points out, the FS9 default aircraft are a drop in the ocean compared wth that lot. Tongue

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Reply #16 - Jun 16^th, 2010 at 5:44am

ShaneG Offline
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Hagar wrote on Jun 16^th, 2010 at 5:17am:

ShaneG wrote on Jun 15^th, 2010 at 11:04am:

My problem is, is that my Aircraft folder is larger than the entire initial install. Grin

There are 875 individual aircraft folders, inside the FS9/Aircraft/ folder, with almost 700 of those being AI planes. Shocked

Blimey Shane! Shocked

No wonder FS takes a while to load. One would have to ask whether it's all necessary. You can't possibly use them all.

As Daube points out, the FS9 default aircraft are a drop in the ocean compared wth that lot. Tongue

I wasn't really sure how much more space flyable planes full of panels & sounds & such take up over AI planes, so that's why I came here asking. Grin

And actually, you'd be surprised how much they see use.

I love to load up at random airports across the world, and just sit on the apron, and watch the AI do it's thing.

It's about as close to spotting as I can get out here in the middle of nowhere.
Even after all this time, I still see some AI planes I've never seen before, or even knew I had. Grin

A solution presented itself to me last night, and although it may sound a little strange, it did the job quite nicely.

I have removed all planes, except for the AI, and the defaults, and then just add in the aircraft folders of the planes I want to use for that session each time.
This has decreased my loading time significantly.

♪♫♪‼

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Reply #17 - Jun 16^th, 2010 at 9:53am

Hagar Offline
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ShaneG wrote on Jun 16^th, 2010 at 5:44am:

A solution presented itself to me last night, and although it may sound a little strange, it did the job quite nicely.

I have removed all planes, except for the AI, and the defaults, and then just add in the aircraft folders of the planes I want to use for that session each time.
This has decreased my loading time significantly.

I was about to suggest that. It's an old trick I use in all my sims. Smiley

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Reply #18 - Jun 16^th, 2010 at 11:27am

aussiewannabe Offline
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ShaneG wrote on Jun 16^th, 2010 at 5:44am:

I have removed all planes, except for the AI, and the defaults, and then just add in the aircraft folders of the planes I want to use for that session each time.
This has decreased my loading time significantly.

I believe the link I provided earlier mentioned doing that Wink

So, how much HD space did you get back by moving them elsewhere (I'm assuming an external hard drive)?

BTW did you know that the CaptSim/Just Flight C-130 takes up approximated 2.5-2.7GB when installed?

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Reply #19 - Jun 16^th, 2010 at 11:48am

ShaneG Offline
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aussiewannabe wrote on Jun 16^th, 2010 at 11:27am:

ShaneG wrote on Jun 16^th, 2010 at 5:44am:

I have removed all planes, except for the AI, and the defaults, and then just add in the aircraft folders of the planes I want to use for that session each time.
This has decreased my loading time significantly.

I believe the link I provided earlier mentioned doing that Wink

So, how much HD space did you get back by moving them elsewhere (I'm assuming an external hard drive)?

BTW did you know that the CaptSim/Just Flight C-130 takes up approximated 2.5-2.7GB when installed?

I removed just over 10GB from the aircraft folder.
And I keep them in another folder on the same drive.

I have an 80Gb drive for XP
and a 500Gb drive for FS9, FSX, and addon storage.

Space hasn't been an issue ever since I got the big drive. Wink

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Reply #20 - Jun 16^th, 2010 at 3:33pm

JoBee Offline
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My technique is to change any planes that are being used for AI to type=2 in the .air file so they don't show up in the selection screen.

Any planes that are not used for AI that I am not flying I simply rename the aircraft.cfg to aircraft.zzz and FS ignores them on startup.

I can pause a flight, renames a file from aircraft.zzz to aircraft.cfg and go back into the sim and that plane will then be available.

This way I don't have to move a bunch of files around, fragging my HD.

Just my 2cents.

cheers,
Joe

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Reply #21 - Jun 16^th, 2010 at 4:36pm

ShaneG Offline
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The AI part I've done, but this suggestion is pure gold. Smiley

JoBee wrote on Jun 16^th, 2010 at 3:33pm:

Any planes that are not used for AI that I am not flying I simply rename the aircraft.cfg to aircraft.zzz and FS ignores them on startup.

I can pause a flight, renames a file from aircraft.zzz to aircraft.cfg and go back into the sim and that plane will then be available.

Now, to find the motivation to rename a couple hundred .cfg files. Undecided

♪♫♪‼

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Reply #22 - Jun 17^th, 2010 at 1:37am

JoBee Offline
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ShaneG wrote on Jun 16^th, 2010 at 4:36pm:

Now, to find the motivation to rename a couple hundred .cfg files. Undecided

Maybe this will help- http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

USE WITH CAUTION

...and don't blame me if you make a mess of things with that utility. It is not very happy about changing file extensions, but you can add another extension which should do the same thing.

Such as changing aircraft.cfg to something like aircraft.cfg.not or something else.

It will be easy to use if you have all the aircraft folders you want to change already moved into another folder, but that is not required.

Hope this helps.

cheers,
Joe

Don't argue with idiots, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

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Reply #23 - Jun 17^th, 2010 at 1:56am

JoBee Offline
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ShaneG wrote on Jun 15^th, 2010 at 11:04am:

There are 875 individual aircraft folders, inside the FS9/Aircraft/ folder, with almost 700 of those being AI planes. Shocked

Ever wonder how many duplications you have?

Being a bit of a neatnik I started looking at my AI folders and found a bunch of instances where I had different folders with identical models.

I was able to consolidate many to eliminate having duplicates.

An invaluable tool for this is called WinMerge - http://winmerge.org/

This great little utility compares files and folders on a binary level.

Say you have 2 AI folders for a 737-700. You can WinMerge the aircraft.cfg and the .mdl files in seconds and tell if they are the same. You can copy, say a [fltsim] section from one aircraft.cfg to another quickly.

Note: it will not present a readable version of the .mdl file, but you can easily see if two of them are identical or not.

Another Note: before consolidating your AI folders consider how it will affect automatic updates, such as WoAI installs.

I love this little utility and use it often.

Hope this helps.

cheers,
Joe

Don't argue with idiots, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

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Reply #24 - Jun 17^th, 2010 at 5:15am

ShaneG Offline
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Ah yes, duplicate AI folders. Wink

My PAI collection is the big offender, with MAIW being a close second, and VOZ coming in third.

I've only got 4 WOAI files. Grin

I could probably cut the number of AI folders in half just by combining all the similar models, but I'm guessing that would then lead to a few .cfgs being several miles long. Grin

I've already combined all of their traffic.bgls into 3 files, instead of 800. So I guess this would be the next logical step. I would just need to make darn sure that I'm getting them matched up correctly.

♪♫♪‼

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Reply #25 - Jun 17^th, 2010 at 10:47am

JoBee Offline
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ShaneG wrote on Jun 17^th, 2010 at 5:15am:

...I would just need to make darn sure that I'm getting them matched up correctly.

It's super easy with WinMerge.

When you compare 2 aircraft folders in WinMerge they are presented to you side-by-side in 2 panels. You can navigate through the folders easily. WinMerge uses colors to highlight differences, so if you click on the .mdl file or the .air file you can tell in less time than it takes me to type this if they are identical or not.

Text files, such as aircraft.cfg files, are presented side-by-side as well and you can copy from one to the other simply.

I use this program all the time for different things.

It's free and fairly simple to operate, check it out.

regards,
Joe

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Reply #26 - Jun 17^th, 2010 at 8:33pm